The present invention relates to a data distribution processing system for effecting registration and transfer operations of data between terminals based on predetermined data display formats, and in particular, to a data distribution processing system and a job distribution processing method suitable when the utilization efficiency of communication lines and the operability for the user are taken into consideration.
Conventionally, in an example of a data distribution processing system, there is used an electronic mail system already put to use in various fields so as to establish respective functions based thereon; however, the data display formats and data are not separately treated in the processing; moreover, in some systems, when a terminal transfers data not registered thereto to a communicating terminal, the registration data of the terminal is also transferred thereto together with the data.
Of those related to this kind of system, reference is to be made to, for example, JP-A-61-25347.
However, the conventional method above is attended with problems as follows.
That is, in a circulation system of electronic slips or forms in which a data display format, for example, a slip is circulated through a plurality of sections or divisions via a host computer such that in each division, data is registered to an entry field assigned thereto and then the slip is passed to the next division in the circulation, the data items thus registered in the respective divisions are circulated together with the format; as a result, the transmission efficiency is deteriorated for the following reasons. That is, the amount of data inputted from such divisions is increased through the circulation; furthermore, at a registration thereof to a mail box and at a takeout thereof from the mail box, the same format and the same data are repeatedly communicated between the host computer and terminals, which leads to a problem that the over all transmission efficiency is lowered in the entire system.
On the other hand, JP-A-58-80758 describes an electronic mail system between distributed processors in which three components including job or business data, data display formats, and programs for generating data, documents, and graphs are separately stored in each distributed processor so as to effect the transmission and reception thereof.
In this system, a central processor is disposed between the distributed processors such that the mails from the respective distributed processors are temporarily stored in the central processor.
In this system, however, the data registered in each distributed processor is circulated together with the format and hence the transmission efficiency is deteriorated.
In addition, the central processor is adopted only as a relay device for effecting the mailing operation between the distributed processors, namely, this method is similar to the conventional data transfer method employed for the data transfer between a plurality of distributed processors.